


They're Out To Get You

by UniverseOnHerShoulders



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Among Us, F/F, Fluff, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-21
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 07:28:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27179920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UniverseOnHerShoulders/pseuds/UniverseOnHerShoulders
Summary: Aboard the TARDIS, the Doctor and Clara learn about crewmates and impostors, and get a crash course in sabotage...
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor & Yasmin Khan & Graham O'Brien & Ryan Sinclair, Thirteenth Doctor/Clara Oswin Oswald
Comments: 6
Kudos: 33





	They're Out To Get You

**Author's Note:**

> I promise I'm a serious writer.

“Yes… yes… yes… oh, _come on man, for reals?!”_

Ryan’s shout echoes along the corridors of the ship to where the Doctor and Clara are making lunch in the kitchen, several plates and the component ingredients of sandwiches spread out between them. For every slice of cheese or ham or tomato that’s reached the bread, the Doctor has eaten at least two more; it’s like attempting to cook with a particularly hungry pet.

“Do I want to ask what he’s doing?” Clara asks, slicing a sandwich neatly in half and then confiscating a used butter knife from the Doctor, who had been on the verge of licking it. “Don’t even think about it.”

“Probably best not to,” the Doctor reasons, getting a teaspoon out of the cutlery drawer, scooping up a spoonful of butter, and sticking it in her mouth before Clara can protest. “Wh’?”

“That’s disgusting.”

“S’not.”

“You’re going to get high cholesterol,” Clara chides, then a thought occurs to her. “Wait, do you even have cholesterol? Or blood? Or… god knows. You’re going to end up regenerating early, anyway.”

“My body doesn’t digest fats like yours does.”

“My body doesn’t digest anything normally,” Clara reminds her, and the Doctor makes a face.

“Right. Well, Time Lords have actually evolved to-”

“Stop eating the bloody butter, get some crisps out the cupboard, and then take these sandwiches through,” Clara tells her sternly, and the Doctor pouts, but drops her teaspoon into the sink and does as she’s bid. Clara follows her back to the second living room, holding a plate of sandwiches in each hand, and wondering whether she’s done enough to sate even Graham’s enormous appetite.

Arriving in the lounge – the first living room is intimidatingly dark, and the third smells funny – the two of them find the team staring intently at their phones, their thumbs working in overdrive. Silence has fallen, and this is somehow more alarming than Ryan’s shouts from earlier. Setting her plates down, Clara leans over Yaz’s shoulder and sees a cartoon spaceship, a purple character, and –

 _Dead Body Reported_ pops up onscreen, and Yaz groans.

“I was so close to finishing the MedBay scan,” she protests sourly, lowering her phone into her lap and letting out a long, impatient sigh. “Who do we reckon it is? Cyan is definitely sus.”

A chat box opens onscreen, and several messages flash up, most of which ask _where?_

“What are you playing?” Clara asks, as the Doctor plonks herself down on the floor and shoves the better part of an entire sandwich into her mouth, her curiosity apparently overwhelmed by her appetite.

“Among Us,” Ryan says, frowning down at the screen, and flicking through the messages with a fingertip. “Purple seems sus to me.”

“Oi!” Yaz protests at once. “I’m purple, and I was nowhere near Admin when it happened – Clara saw me.”

“Err,” Clara says at once, peering down at the screen, where chat bubbles containing abbreviations she doesn’t understand – or want to understand – continue to pop up. “You were definitely on your own, yeah. When what happened?”

“Oh, lime green is dead,” Ryan waves his hand dismissively. “Good, he was spamming the chat with stupid messages.”

“Ryan,” Graham says in a disappointed tone. “He was probably just a kid.”

“He’s not _actually_ dead, Grandad,” Ryan points out, rolling his eyes in his grandfather’s direction. “Who are we voting for? Pink is advocating for white, but I think white is definitely sus; I saw him by the last body and he didn’t report.”

“What,” the Doctor finally asks, gulping down the hastily-chewed remains of her sandwich. Clara resists the urge to tell her off for her appalling lack of manners. “Is Among Us?”

“It’s a game,” Ryan says, somewhat unnecessarily. “You’re on a spaceship or a planet, and there’s ten players – sometimes less, but usually ten – and there’s one, two, or three impostors. So you’re trying to fix things and get home and the impostors are trying to kill you all and sabotage things, like breaking the nuclear reactor or messing up the oxygen. And then… oh god, voting time, sorry…”

He breaks off and clicks something onscreen, and Yaz and Graham both look back at their own phones.

“Yellow voted first, that’s definitely sus,” Yaz chips in, tapping the screen. “Ooh, look how many people voted white…”

“And when someone is killed there’s a meeting, and you have to try and work out who did it,” Ryan continues, as Clara watches a white character drift across a cartoon vista of space onscreen. “Then you have a vote, and whoever gets most votes is kicked out into space, and it tells you if you were right or not.”

“Hmm, white was not the impostor,” Yaz muses, reading the text onscreen aloud. “So that’s one remaining. I’m getting nervous.”

“This all sounds very violent,” the Doctor notes, shoving another sandwich in her mouth and then noticing the way Clara is glaring at her. “Wh’?”

“Small bites!” Clara pleads, as the Doctor chews and swallows at the speed of light, although she knows her lessons on manners are falling on deaf ears. “Chew with your mouth closed! You’re not a feral animal!”

“I might be,” the Doctor counters, her mouth still partly full. “There’s no knowing what I might have been in my original universe. I might have regenerated into a swan.”

“Yaz,” Ryan asks suddenly and desperately, his voice laced with panic. “Where are you? Because – _nah!_ ” He sits back in his chair, dropping his phone on his lap and folding his arms, sucking in a long breath through his nose to signal his displeasure.

“Did you just – _hey!”_ Yaz looks up from her phone and over at Graham, who is smirking like the Cheshire Cat. “I can’t believe you just killed us both!”

“Never underestimate the old codger,” he says smugly. “And oh look – no one suspects me. I win.”

“Killing your grandson isn’t very nice,” the Doctor notes, looking bemused. “Nor is killing Yaz.”

“Ryan broke my neck two games ago,” Graham points out. “That wasn’t very nice, either.”

“This game sounds _really_ violent,” the Doctor repeats, reaching for a third sandwich, and Clara reaches over and slaps her wrist. “Hey!”

“Let someone else eat something,” Clara rolls her eyes, and the Doctor sulkily retracts her hand. “Guys, you might want to swoop in on these before the Doctor demolishes them all.”

The three of them bear down on the plates with gratitude, settling back in their seats and tucking into stacks of sandwiches as the Doctor looks hopefully at Clara like an expectant puppy.

“Can I…” she begins, and Clara laughs.

“Now you can, yeah.”

The Doctor cheers and snatches up another sandwich, and Clara takes a couple for herself, sitting back and starting to tuck in.

“Who’s best at this game then?” she asks, and Yaz and Graham both immediately point at Ryan, who is munching on a sandwich with one hand and scrolling through menu options with the other.

“He’s like… like a ninja,” Yaz says in an awestruck tone. “It’s like… he knows when he’s about to be killed, and he’s got these incredible invasive manoeuvres… and when he’s the impostor… he creeps around the ship committing sabotage and the next thing you know, he’s killed off half the crew without you noticing. Wasn’t your record killing seven people before any of us realised you were sus?”

“What’s sus?” Clara asks, then grimaces. “God, I feel old.”

“Suspicious,” Ryan grins at her, not bothering to counter the ‘old’ comment. “Shady. Like Graham was being last game by not saying anything. You gotta learn what’s sus and what’s not… like… first person to vote, before anyone’s said anything? That’s sus. People who get proper aggy when you accuse them of things… that’s sus. People running from the body… definitely sus, especially if they don’t report the body.”

“Although sometimes there’s sabotage happening,” Yaz notes. “So people are running to try and stop a meltdown or the oxygen system breaking, but sometimes… yeah, sometimes it’s just proper dodgy.”

“This sounds very complicated.”

“It’s not,” Ryan says sincerely. “Give us your phone, you can download it and have a go.”

“Do you promise not to kill me?” Clara asks, handing over her phone with trepidation, but Ryan only winks at her cartoonishly.

“Can’t promise that, can I?” he teases, handing the phone back a couple of minutes later. Onscreen, there’s a cartoon representation of a starfield, with occasional brightly coloured characters floating by.

“You might want to try the tutorial first,” Yaz says quickly, scooting closer to Clara and clicking on that option for her. Clara looks down at the instructions onscreen, reads through them, and then tries to move her character around with the virtual joystick. It’s surprisingly intuitive, and she watches the little figure run in circles

“That’s it,” Yaz tells her encouragingly, placing her hand over Clara’s and gently repositioning it slightly, so that her phone sits more comfortably in her grip. “What do you think?”

“Well, it seems easy enough,” Clara reasons, looking over at the Doctor, who is scoffing the last few sandwiches and looking away from her. “But no one is trying to kill me.”

Yaz laughs, navigating Clara out of the tutorial and into ‘Online’ mode.

“You need a name for yourself.”

“Alright…” Clara frowns, trying to think of something suitable. “‘ImmortalQueen’.”

The Doctor snorts, but Clara only throws a cushion at the back of her head. “Yaz didn’t say it had to be a humble name,” she notes, typing it into the box. “Now, what?”

The team talk her through the steps to access their game. They explain something complicated about codes and players at home and a lot of other things she doesn’t understand, and then she’s standing in a waiting area, wandering in circles and admiring a fellow character’s pumpkin headgear.

“You can customise yourself,” Yaz notes. “And wear a hat and things…”

Again, her hand settles over Clara’s, and she guides Clara over to a cartoon laptop which offers the option ‘Customise.’ Clara changes to a bright navy blue colour, with a pair of bat wings sprouting from her head, and Yaz goes a pretty shade of pink when she realises she’s still touching Clara, letting go of her and scooting away abruptly.

“Are you ready?” Ryan asks impatiently. “Or do you wanna make yourselves look pretty for any longer?”

“Shut up,” Yaz tells him fondly, and the game begins.

Clara runs after several other players, finds herself isolated with a yellow figure called _HoopLaLa_ , and is just about to start work on her task when a graphic pops up of the custard-yellow character breaking her neck. Raising her eyebrows, she says nothing aloud, and instead drifts around the ship as a ghost for several minutes, until Yaz lets out a little cry of distress and Clara’s body is reported.

Clara blinks hard and looks up, the spell of the game broken as her phone makes quiet _pop, pop, pop_ sounds, the remaining players trying to work out who could’ve done it. The Doctor has edged over to her and is now sat with her head on Clara’s knee, which would be endearing were it not for the fact that the Time Lady’s gaze is fixed on the half-eaten cheese and tomato sandwich on her lap.

“God, you’re like a stray dog,” Clara chides fondly, ruffling the Time Lady’s hair and shoving the plate in her direction. “Go on, have it.”

The Doctor wolfs it down as the game continues without Clara, before scooting back to the coffee table and propping her head on her hands. There’s a strange look in her eyes, and Clara sets her phone down, starting to gather up the empty plates, feeling the Doctor’s gaze on her as she does so.

“Do you want a hand?” Yaz asks, but her attention is fixed on the screen of her phone, and Clara shakes her head before realising Yaz can’t see her.

“No, you three carry on. Just tidying up _our_ ship rather than floating around The Skeld like the spirit at the feast.”

Clara heads into the kitchen, and there’s the soft rustling sound of the Time Lady unfolding herself from the floor and padding after her. As she sticks the used plates into the sink and turns the taps on, the Doctor’s arms snake around her waist and a kiss is pressed to her neck, and she smiles, tilting her head to the side to allow the Doctor easier access.

“What’s the matter?” she asks, reaching up with a wet hand and booping the Time Lady on the nose as the Doctor presses a trail of feather-light kisses from her shoulder to her jaw. “Stray dog wants cuddles now?”

“Not a stray dog,” the Doctor mumbles, burying her face in Clara’s jumper. “Just don’t like…” she breaks off.

“What?”

“Don’t like you talking about death so casually,” the Doctor mumbles into her shoulder, holding her all the tighter. “Don’t like you being dead.”

“It’s only a game,” Clara reminds her gently, turning off the taps and rubbing at the topmost plate with a dish sponge. “It’s not real death. But in case you hadn’t noticed… I am definitely really dead, so it’s not like Yaz, Ryan or Graham can do much damage there.”

“Don’t,” the Doctor mumbles again, clinging to her protectively. “Don’t like being reminded.”

“What you being all soft for?” Clara asks, frowning as she settles her hands over the Doctor’s. “You’re not usually like this.”

“I…” the Doctor lapses into self-conscious silence, and Clara twists in her embrace, settling her arms over the Doctor’s shoulders. “Just…”

Realisation dawns on Clara. “Hang on,” she begins suspiciously, wondering if her hunch is correct. “Is this about how close Yaz was to me?”

“No,” the Doctor mutters, but her cheeks flush in a tell-tale manner. “No, not…”

“You could’ve been that close to me,” Clara points out, torn between fondness and exasperation. “But you were sat on the floor doing your best scavenger impression, and demolishing sandwiches at a rate that puts competitive eaters to shame.”

“I…”

“You daft bugger, I don’t fancy Yaz, I fancy you. Don’t go getting all green-eyed on me about your own team being in my vicinity, or I’ll have to make you get Among Us as well, and then bump you off as punishment.”

“You’d never catch me.”

“I would. And you’d have to let me kill you, because I’m your other half and you love me.”

“You’re very mean to me sometimes, you know that?”

“You’re very silly sometimes, you know that?” Clara counters, turning back to the washing up and starting to scrub the plates clean as the Doctor presses a lingering kiss to her shoulder. “Sweet, but silly.”

“Teach me how to play.”

“Sorry, is the great and mighty Time Lady asking a mere human for help on something?”

The Doctor laughs against her shoulder. “The great and mighty Time Lord is asking you to sit on her lap and teach her something, yes.”

“Blimey, now there’s an appealing offer,” Clara muses aloud. “You wouldn’t be able to fidget or wander off for a whole five seconds.”

“Are you going to sit on my lap, or not?”

“I mean, not while I’m washing up, no,” Clara notes. “After this, yes, absolutely.”

“Good,” the Doctor kisses her neck gently, then adds in a hopeful tone: “Do you think there’s any sandwiches left…?”

* * *

“Right,” Clara says pragmatically. She’s perched on the Doctor’s lap, and she feels oddly embarrassed about this. The team aren’t staring at them, but she feels self-conscious; as a couple, they’re not usually so demonstrative when the three of them are around. The Doctor’s arms are either side of her waist, and the Time Lady is looking over Clara’s shoulder at her own phone, where her character is running deftly around the tutorial area in figure-eights.

“This is easy,” the Doctor scoffs. “What’s demanding about this?”

“Oh, you have no idea…” Ryan says with barely-suppressed glee. “Shall we try an actual game?”

There is general murmured agreement, and then the game begins. Clara is only watching this time, and within ten seconds of the game commencing, a lime green figure runs up to the Doctor’s bright-yellow player and stabs her to death. She bites back a laugh as the Doctor is reincarnated as a flower-wearing ghost, and drifts around the ship looking forlorn.

_Dead Body Reported._

“Hang on,” Ryan says in disbelief. “Are you dead already?! I thought you were meant to be like, genius level intellect…”

“Oh, Ryan Sinclair,” the Doctor says competitively, tipping Clara off her lap – to Clara’s considerable consternation – and rolling up her sleeves. “Bring it on, dude. Bring. It. On.”


End file.
